


Golden

by tobefree (NotAllThoseWhoWander)



Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, M/M, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-08-09
Updated: 2014-08-09
Packaged: 2018-02-12 06:51:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2099721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NotAllThoseWhoWander/pseuds/tobefree
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Enjolras is the new kid, Grantaire's a renegade art student, and there's something amiss at Oak Hills High School.</p><p> </p><p>Part high school drama, part sort-of thriller, with a healthy dose of romance, the supernatural, and teen angst thrown in.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Golden

**Author's Note:**

> This fic contains trigger warnings for the use of homophobic slurs, casual racism and the discussion of death. That being said, it's most definitely not a tragedy.

* * *

 

Enjolras already hates Oak Hills with every fiber of his being. 

It's ugly—suburban sprawl under a concrete-colored sky. Manhattan's vibrancy, sidewalk murals and painted bricks and laundry hanging from fire escapes, already feels unreal, like a dream or a memory from another lifetime. Oak Hills is strip malls and convenience stores and low, unsightly buildings. Also, Enjolras notes with measured disdain, no oak trees or hills in sight. Blatant false advertising, but when he points this out to his mother she rolls her eyes and hunches further over the sedan's steering wheel, craning her neck to look at street signs.

"There's not even, like, a park," he points out. "Where are kids supposed to _play_? Doesn't that seem kind of unhealthy?"

No comment from the driver's seat, but an exasperated sigh when they pass a baseball diamond and red climbing frame. There are a few kids out, playing on the swingset and kicking a soccer ball around. Enjolras huffs and tugs his sweatshirt hood up a little further. He's fairly certain that he's going to hate living here, an idea only reinforced when they pull up in front of a shabby duplex on Horner Avenue (also, what the hell kind of name is  _Horner_? It sounds like the name of a sex shop). Gray shingles, a metal awning over the concrete porch. There's a small front yard, lots of yellow grass and weeds. Enjolras glances around at similar low-slung houses, the squares of front yards without flowers or hedges. 

"Okay," his mother says, and twists the key in the ignition. Enjolras' chest tightens. He hadn't expected much, but the photographs on the renter's website had definitely taken a few liberties with the duplex's exterior. 

Across the street, a lawn mower starts up. Enjolras' mother reaches over and squeezes his shoulder, a gesture that offers very little comfort. Enjolras feels utterly hollow. 

He is going to be absolutely  _miserable_ here. 

* * *

 

Frankly, Enjolras hadn't expected much. The duplex is more spacious than their old apartment on the Upper West Side, but it's crammed with unfamiliar furniture—rickety side tables and a weird china cabinet full of antique dolls and a sofa that smells like cigarettes. Enjolras' new bedroom is pretty small, but there's enough wall space for his posters and a desk for his computer and the bed is actually pretty nice. It smells kind of musty, like no one's slept here in a while, but he's okay with that. He spends the afternoon hauling boxes in front the sedan's trunk and backseat while his mother meets with the landlord, an old woman with teased hair and grossly long acrylic fingernails. She lives upstairs and warns Enjolras not to play music too loudly (like, what a rude assumption, right?). 

"I know that it's not home," his mother says as she lays paper plates on the kitchen table. "It takes some getting used to."

Enjolras doesn't reply. He can't stop thinking about his father, living in their apartment on West Ninety-Fifth Street with his tacky girlfriend, who stank like perfume and always fussed over Enjolras' hair like he was a little girl or something. Sitting on  _their_ couch, eating in  _their_ kitchen, watching  _their_ television and probably deleting Enjolras' carefully recorded episodes of Whale Wars and The West Wing. 

At least his mom makes microwave pizza for dinner, which is pretty good. Then she starts talking about school, which is pretty awful.

"I talked with the principal today," she says, scraping cheese off the ridge of the plate. "Some guy named Valjean. I told him about the Students for Social Change club that you started at LaGuardia and he—"

" _What_?" Enjolras gasps, horrified. "Mom, oh my  _god_."

"He seemed to think it was really cool of you. He said that maybe you could drum up interest in starting a chapter out here!"

"SFSC doesn't need an Illinois chapter," Enjolras mutters, picking apart his pizza crust. 

"Well, I said that you would talk to him about it."

_Great_. Enjolras fakes interest until his mother says something about getting a good night's sleep before school, and then he dumps his plate in the trash and makes a quick break for his bedroom. 

He takes a long, scalding shower, and then huddles on his bed with his laptop. He writes an email to Jehan, mostly complaining about how fucking  _horrible_ suburbia is, and warns Jehan to never stray west of, like, the Bronx. Also, to never transfer to a new school district in October of senior year, because  _seriously_. 

Jehan doesn't respond to the email right away, and Enjolras remembers the time difference and figures that Jehan's probably asleep. He shuts his computer down and lays in the darkness for a long time, inhaling the smell of mustiness and thinking about weird it feels to be living in someone else's home. He misses New York like it's part of himself. It's too quiet here. There's no rush of traffic, no clatter of car wheels against metal plates on the street. No taxi horns, shouts from the street below the window. And, god, the darkness. It swallows him up. The house keeps creaking ("just settling", his mom had promised, but Enjolras is pretty sure it's, like, some kind of malicious spirit of a former renter). He's too hot, and then too cold. Finally, after two a.m., he drifts into an unsettled sleep, dreams about Manhattan.

* * *

 

_um okay, this place is so fucking horrible. remember how we used to joke about never living anywhere else in the country? we were right, dude. we were so right. suburbia is weird and gross. there's a church every three blocks and when we were on the highway i saw probably five cars with_ actual antlers  _on the back. these people kill animals for fun. (also, there are animals that aren't rats or cockroaches. help)_

_also, oak hills high sounds like a school from a movie. probably one about cheerleaders and football players and nerds and stuff. never transfer schools in fucking october of senior year oh my god. everyone's gonna hate me. okay maybe that's fair because i think i hate everyone already. i saw like seventeen thousand guys in letterman jackets earlier. i think my life is turning into a horrible high school movie. if you see my dad, tell him to fuck off from me._

_peace,_

_—e_

* * *

 

"Shit," Enjolras says, aloud. 

His mom had woken up early to get to work (the new real estate office is across town), leaving Enjolras to walk ten blocks to Oak Hills High School in the bitter cold. He wouldn't have minded the trek in Manhattan, where ten blocks was a breeze because there was  _plenty of stuff to look at_ , like passerby and street performers and cool dogs out for a walk. The streets here are cold and lonely, windblown. He hadn't seen any other teenagers until he'd started across the school parking lot. 

That was about when he'd noticed that there weren't any other guys dressed in black skinny jeans and red blazers. Baseball caps were definitely a thing here. Also, sweatshirts. And camo-print jackets. And baggy pants.

A group of girls push past him, and one of them coughs  _fag_ under her breath. Enjolras' heart leaps, then sinks. His leg twitches. He's about ready to turn and flee (like, fuck high school, right? He can home-school himself until graduation) when someone grabs his shoulder.

"Hey, man."

Enjolras wheels, preparing some kind of excuse or apology, and finds himself almost nose-to-nose with a grinning guy with curly dark hair and very white teeth.

"Um."

"I'm Courfeyrac. I work with the administrative office, so I'm supposed to show you around today. You must be Enjolras. Jesus, don't look like I'm gonna bite you." The guy—Courfeyrac—slaps Enjolras' shoulder. He's wearing a Metallica t-shirt and jeans that aren't ridiculously baggy, so Enjolras figures that he must be at least kind of cool. "The first day is always a bitch. Office is this way."

Enjolras follows Courfeyrac into Oak Hills High—a series of grim brick buildings—and down a packed hallway. Kids part before them, eyeing Enjolras up and down. He's never felt more exposed. 

An administrative secretary enters him into the system and prints out a schedule and map of the school, which Courfeyrac quickly establishes is totally unnecessary.

"We have, like, almost every class together. I'll show you where you need to be," he promises, steering Enjolras out into the hall. "Also, um, a word of advice? Lose the blazer. No offense." 

"None taken," Enjolras mutters, shrugging out of the garment. He crams it in his satchel (also probably a mistake. Backpacks are  _definitely_ a thing in Oak Hills, and fake-leather satchels are definitely  _not_ ), more concerned with the last class on his schedule than any glaring fashion oversights. "Uh, also—I think there's a mistake. I'm in an art class last period, but I never signed up for it."

"Oh, yeah. Automatic. It's a requirement—gotta fulfill some district thing, or. Something. It's either Studio Art or Orchestra. Or Marching Band, but you don't really strike me as a band geek, so." Courfeyrac lifts his eyebrows. "I've been in the orchestra for four years and trust me: you want Studio Art."

"I'm not an artist," Enjolras protests weakly, letting Courfeyrac drag him down a steep set of stairs. "I can't even draw stick figures."

"So fake it." Courfeyrac grins, revealing those blinding teeth again. "Say it's, like,  _modern art_ or something."

Which is exactly what Enjolras plans to do, after he's done faking his way through AP English Lit, and Calc, and Advanced French. Courfeyrac is in all of his classes, which at least gives Enjolras a friendly face to rely on. Two guys in letterman jackets smirk at his v-neck shirt in French, but Courfeyrac strikes up a conversation with them about the football team's losing streak, and they look away, chagrined. 

At lunchtime, Courfeyrac shows Enjolras the ins and outs of the cafeteria ("don't walk by the jock's table, because they're total dicks and have a tendency to, like, throw food. The theatre kids are cool. Band kids too. Good people.") and advises Enjolras to avoid anything with a meat component.

"Oh," Enjolras says, and then, "well, I'm a vegetarian, so."

"You're a  _vegetarian_?" Courfeyrac says, like it's a totally foreign concept. Which, maybe it is. "That's so interesting. I don't think I've ever met a guy who's a vegetarian. Or, like, anyone who wasn't a total hippy."

"Um," Enjolras says, because he isn't what else to say. And then, because Courfeyrac actually  _does_ seem interested, he adds, "it's actually much healthier—not to mention far better for the environment. A really conscious lifestyle choice, you know? Like, eating meat isn't necessarily  _bad_ for you, but consuming too much red meat is detrimental to heart health. Also, the meatpacking industry is pretty horrific—slaughterhouses are insanely inhumane. There's a pretty negative environmental—"

Enjolras is interrupted by a short, dark-haired girl barreling into Courfeyrac, a blur of denim and plaid. After enjoying a lengthy hug, she introduces herself as Éponine and tugs them over to a table occupied by a pale kid with brown hair and eyeglasses. 

"This is Combeferre," Éponine says, pulling out a chair and sitting down. "I like your style, new boy."

"It's Enjolras," Enjolras says, and then, to avoid sounding brusque, "and thanks. I think that you're the only one."

"He got some shit for wearing a blazer this morning," Courfeyrac clarifies. Combeferre looks up from a notebook and gives Enjolras a sort of sideways smile.

"My old high school was really different," Enjolras says, watching the football team fake-wrestle each other over a plastic bench. "People, uh, were a lot—" He wants to say  _nicer_ or maybe  _classier_ , both of which feel really offensive. Also, Courfeyrac has been nothing but awesome, and Éponine and Combeferre seem cool. So he settles for trailing off and gesturing with his can of soda. 

"Where are you from?" Combeferre asks, nudging his glasses up his nose.

"Manhattan," Enjolras says, automatically. Then he realizes that he's not in the city anymore, that clarifying your borough is no longer an acceptable means of communicating your home turf. "New York City, I mean."

"Woah," Éponine arches her eyebrows. "A city boy. This must be, like, hell for you."

Enjolras tries not to betray his misery, covering with a laugh.

"Um."

"Okay, if you feel like you don't belong, remember that in ninth grade I was one of  _three_ Indian kids in the entire school." Courfeyrac rolls his eyes. "Like, on the first day of World History the teacher asked where I was from, in front of the  _entire fucking class_ , so I go: um, Chicago? Right, because that's where I was born. And the girl behind me, I swear, goes:  _you don't look like you're from Chicago_. I swear. I felt like I was in, like, racist Mean Girls."

The conversation dissolves quickly into a discussion of how horrible that particular teacher had been, and how she mocked Éponine's dyslexia in front of the entire class section, and how certain Courfeyrac was that she'd actually been banned from making personal remarks because of that incident, or probably some other terrible offensive thing she'd done. Enjolras eats his cheese pizza in contented silence. Sitting in the midst of such a lively conversation feels  _really_ good. Almost like finding friends.

* * *

 

Fifth period Biology is hellish. Courfeyrac isn't in the same section, so Enjolras sits by himself at a black-topped lab table and tries to ignore the fact that two guys behind him are talking about him in awful fake-whispers. 

"How hard do you think he takes it up the ass?" 

"Probably pretty hard. He's, like, what do you call them? The skinny gay guys?"

"I have no fucking idea. I'm not a fucking fag."

"Whatever."

Enjolras digs his fingernails into his palm hard enough to hurt. 

They're assigned partners for an upcoming dissection, and when Enjolras hears his name read aloud he raises his hand. 

"Can we opt out of the dissection section of the lab?" 

The teacher looks up from her roster. "If you feel that performing or assisting with the dissection may make you  _ill_ , you may opt to write an essay detailing—"

"It's not that," Enjolras says, and, god, why does his voice sound so high and reedy? "I'm opposed to dissection because it's animal cruelty."

The two guys behind him burst out in raucous laughter. A few other kids join in, and Enjolras hears someone crow  _what the fuck_ from the back of the room. Enjolras feels his face heat in a furious blush, but he doesn't stand down.

"I'm sorry," the teacher says. "That's hardly an acceptable reason for refusing to participate in a mandatory dissection. If you have further issues with that, I suggest that you take it up with the principal."

It feels like a slap in the face—Enjolras isn't exactly used to teachers being so  _bitchy_. At LaGuardia High, he'd been, like, second in the class, certainly in the running for valedictorian. He'd been friendly with his teachers; they liked and respected him. They saw him as hard-working, an earnest kid who would probably end up at Columbia or NYU, graduate with honors. His chest goes all tight and hot, and his throat burns. 

The rest of the class stares and whispers, and Enjolras spends the remainder of the period in silent humiliation. His partner—some kid called Montparnasse—is absent, so Enjolras fills out the pre-lab worksheet on his own. He feels other kids' eyes on his back, sharp like knives. He kind of really wants to, like, die. Or something. He wonders if committing seppuku by mechanical pencil is cultural appropriation. Or possible. If it is, it's looking pretty fucking appealing.

As soon as the bell rings, Enjolras flees, trailed by a shouted  _faggot_. The teacher turns a blind eye to the vulgarity, but Enjolras feels sick as he follows Courfeyrac's instructions—down the stairs, go past the Home Ec classroom, Studio Art is the door at the end of the hall. The school basement is blissfully quiet, and Enjolras realizes that there's a frankly heaven-sent lack of boys in letterman jackets or camo-print baseball hats. 

The art classroom is actually pretty great. There are windows set into the side of the upper wall—they must look out on ground level—that let in afternoon sunlight, and all the walls are painted white. The room itself is lurid with half-finished pieces, easels and cans of paint, plastic skeletons and dress mannequins for life drawing. Also, there are only about ten other kids in the class. Nobody snickers at Enjolras' v-neck shirt, or calls him a fag. The teacher, a gray-haired woman named Mrs. Holt, gives Enjolras a sketchbook and tells him that they're working on drawing the human skeleton.

"It's a good reference for the life drawing that you'll do later," she says, leaning over to hand him a metal tin of pencils. She smells like perfume, like what Enjolras remembers his grandmother smelling like. He draws a frankly abysmal skeleton, but Mrs. Holt says that she can tell he's trying hard, and that's what matters.

Enjolras still feels like a total failure, especially since the girl next to him is drawing an obscenely amazing skeleton (like, it looks like a  _photograph_ , come on). When the bell rings he stands up to leave and promptly knocks over a plastic umbrella stand full of fake flowers, which in turn knocks over an easel and a drawer full of paint tubes.

"Shit, shit," Enjolras hisses, fumbling to catch cascading plastic roses and tubes of oil paints. The students around him file out quietly, and Enjolras stoops hurriedly to clean up. 

Mrs. Holt comes over with a jacket over her arm. "I can't tell you how many times I've done that," she says, which makes Enjolras feel a lot better (even if nobody had bothered to help him, which, what the fuck, fellow Studio Art kids?). "I have to run to an appointment, but I'll leave you the key. Just lock the door when you're done, alright?"

"Yeah, of course," Enjolras says, replacing the fake flowers as fast as humanly possible. Mrs. Holt pats his head and calls him 'sweetie', which is totally kind of her, and then leaves the key on the table. Enjolras waits until he hears her retreating footsteps before he sinks to his knees, lets his head drop. He's biting back tears, his throat burning, eyes prickling, when someone says,

"Uh, dude?"

And, okay, Enjolras doesn't  _scream_ , he  _maybe_ yelps a little and says "whatthefuck" kind of loudly, because he's pretty sure that about a second ago he was the only person in the classroom. His head snaps up so fast his neck stings.

"Shit, sorry." A lanky, curly-haired boy is standing by the doorway, hands shoved in his jean pockets. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine." Enjolras stands up quickly, trying to swipe at his eyes surreptitiously. "I, uh. I knocked a bunch of stuff over, and. I was just, uh. Cleaning up."

"I do that  _all_ the time." The boy drifts closer, then bends to pick up the last few tubes of paint. "Okay, one time I tripped over this girl's messenger bag and I fell  _right_ into one of these skeletons. Knocked it off the base, plastic bones  _everywhere_. I broke it, too, so there were, like, ribs and shit all over the floor."

Enjolras laughs before he can stop himself. "Sorry, sorry. I'm not laughing at you. It's just—"

"Laugh, man. It's funny. I know." The guy grins, revealing straight white teeth. "I'm Grantaire, by the way."

"I'm Enjolras." He can't stop himself from smiling. "Thanks for, uh..." He gestures sort of vaguely towards the floor. Grantaire shakes his head, a lock of curly dark hair tumbling over his forehead. 

"No problem. We've all been there."

"No kidding," Enjolras mutters, glancing at his open sketchbook. Suddenly, his drawing looks like fucking chicken-scratch. "Like, I figured that being the new kid would be kind of shitty, but not, like  _this_ shitty."

"New kid?" Grantaire's gaze flickers to Enjolras' face, rakes over his clothes. "Yeah, I was gonna say something. I haven't seen you around."

"I just moved here. Like, um, two days ago."

"No way!" Grantaire's moving around the classroom now, sifting through drawers. "Where from?"

"Manha—New York City." And, god, he misses the Upper West Side like a fucking  _heartbeat_ , the clamor and chaos and raw, disorganized beauty of the city, of a million people on an island, everyone's lives jammed together like pieces of a weird, colorful jigsaw puzzle.

"Wow. Oak Hills must suck some serious ass in comparison. I can't even imagine—this place is  _so_ fucking boring."

Enjolras hums in response, mostly because he doesn't want to offend Grantaire's hometown. Instead, he watches Grantaire remove a sheet of thick, creamy paper from a drawer, a handful of pencils, a gummy eraser. 

"So, are you a senior?" he asks as Grantaire pulls out a low metal stool and sits down. 

"Huh? Oh—yeah. Senior." Grantaire nods, eyes fixed on the paper. His left hand moves deftly, quickly, in rapid sketching motions; the pencil marks are so light that Enjolras can't tell what he's drawing, but it's definitely a human figure. He can't stop watching the way that Grantaire's knuckles curl around the pencil, the way the muscles and ligaments of his hand shift as he draws. It's kind of transfixing. Actually, it's kind of—

Beautiful.

Enjolras jerks his gaze away, picks up his own shoddy drawing and slips it into his satchel.

"Hey," Grantaire says suddenly, without looking up from his paper. "It's not so bad, you know?"

And if Enjolras makes a sound of dissent in reply, who can blame him? He thinks about the crowded hallways, all the boys in letterman jackets sneering at him, insults coughed behind his back.  _  
_

"Is it?"

"Well." Grantaire sort of half-shrugged, lifting his right shoulder a little. "I mean, I guess it depends on how you look at it. My first few years here were pretty horrible. But then, you know, I kind of found where I fit in."

Enjolras wants to ask  _how long did that take?_ , but he settles for nodding in silent agreement. 

"I feel like I'm gonna end up spending a lot of time alone," he mutters, more to himself than Grantaire.

"I do. There's nothing wrong with it." Grantaire glances up, and, wow, his eyes are  _really_ green. Like, the kind of green that belongs in forests, or on animated characters. Or something. "We can be alone together."

Enjolras can't help but grin at that. Suddenly, nasty classmates and horrible teachers and a total lack of artistic talent seems like a bad memory, and he's pulling out a stool across the table from Grantaire, sitting down and toying around with his shoelaces while he watches Grantaire draw.

They end up talking about art, and how Grantaire's been drawing since he was a little kid, how he used to doodle during class and get in trouble for it, how glad he was when he found out that he could actually  _study_ art in school. Enjolras makes a quip about the football team and Grantaire spends, like, ten minutes ranting about how stupid and petty they are. Enjolras considers bringing up the way they'd hissed  _fag_ at his back, but decides not to. That's a can of worms for another time. Instead, he talks about refusing to participate in the dissection, and how absolutely shitty his Biology teacher is.

"Woah," Grantaire says, and his eyes  _totally_ light up. "That's  _so_ badass, dude."

Enjolras ducks his head; he's  _definitely_ not blushing right now. "It just goes against, like, all of my morals. You know? At my old school, things were a lot different. Students were allowed to take a stand for things they believed in."

"I think it's like, insane that you did that, though." Grantaire's fingers curl around the eraser and skate over the paper. "Like, seriously. You're like some kind of animal-rights superhero, I swear."

Enjolras doesn't even try to hide his grin. The conversation lapses into a debate about comics, which Grantaire swears that he reads religiously (which makes sense, because he's obviously a crazy-good artist). Enjolras doesn't know much about comics themselves, but he's pretty into Marvel movies. So they talk about X-Men for, like, thirty minutes. 

"It's totally an analogy for being an outsider—mutations, I mean. Feeling like you don't fit in, like you don't belong." Grantaire looks up, meeting Enjolras' gaze, and there's something sharp and sad behind his eyes. It tightens Enjolras' chest. "And then on the flip side of that, there's all those totally stupid superpowers, like Speedball. What's up with that, seriously!" 

Enjolras has no idea who Speedball is, so he lets Grantaire educate him. And, yeah, Speedball is  _totally_ ridiculous (like, a ton of  _bouncing balls_? That's his superpower, literally. How lame, come on), and they end up inventing a bunch of weird and useless superpowers—like being able to turn into a desk lamp, or blend in with exclusively camouflage backgrounds, or summon a bunch of footballs from nowhere. 

Enjolras barely notices the passage of time, but when he looks at the plastic clock on the wall he realizes with a jolt that it's almost five.

"Oh, shit!" He bolts off the stool. "I've gotta get home, my mom'll be home from work in like, thirty minutes."

"Oh." Grantaire puts his pencil aside. "Okay."

He looks totally disappointed, though, his eyebrows furrowing into a kind of scowl that Enjolras  _doesn't think_ is adorable at all. 

"Um, it was really great talking with you," Enjolras says, and means it ten thousand percent. "Seriously. You're not like, uh—you're not like a lot of the guys around here."

Grantaire's mouth twists into something that looks like a smirk. "No kidding," he says.

"I'll, uh, see you around, I guess?"

Grantaire's face falls a little more. "Yeah, see you around."

Enjolras sneaks a final glance at Grantaire's paper, sees the sketch taking fuller form—a young man with short dark hair and round glasses playing a guitar. It's good—like,  _really_ good. The detail is pretty incredible, down to the look of concentration on the guy's face.

"That's seriously amazing," Enjolras says, and Grantaire's cheeks turn pink.

"I, uh." He shifts the paper a little, as if subconsciously. "Thanks."

"Yeah." Enjolras tries not to stare at the way Grantaire chews on his bottom lip, like he's trying hard not to smile. "I'll, um, see you around school tomorrow, yeah?"

"Oh, um." Grantaire drops his pencils, the wooden cylinders scattering across the linoleum floor. He bends to pick them up hurriedly. "Probably not. I have—uh, an appointment tomorrow. So. After school, though. I'll be here."

"After school," Enjolras repeats, walking backwards for the door. "Around three-fifteen?"

"Scout's honor." Grantaire holds up three fingers. Enjolras feels his face tilt into a full smile. He's turning to open the door when Grantaire says, "Uh, hey."

"Yeah?"

"I'm not really, um, supposed to be in here." He twists one of the pencils in a little plastic sharpener. "No one is, really. I kind of sneak in after hours, though, to work on stuff. So, uh, it would be awesome if could maybe, like—not mention that you saw me in here?"

Enjolras turns at the door, holding up three fingers. "Scout's honor," he says.

* * *

 

The hallways are largely deserted, and though he hears the distant drumbeat of the marching band practicing on the football field, Enjolras doesn't see anyone on his way to the front of the school. Outside, a chilly wind has picked up. Low clouds scud overhead, and the air smells like rain. 

It's a long walk home, and the wind cuts through Enjolras' blazer like a knife, but he barely feels the cold. He's all warm with contentment, and the tingly feeling of something like happiness, or maybe excitement. He keeps thinking about Grantaire's smile, and the way he'd held the pencil while he sketched, and suddenly things don't seem so bad.  

 


End file.
